


Time After Time

by MovesLikeBucky



Series: Ineffable [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MovesLikeBucky/pseuds/MovesLikeBucky
Summary: Three snippets of time, just like before.  Once to fall in love, once to be heartbroken, and once to maybe finally have it all.    This time a demon chasing an angel through time, if only to be near him for just a few more minutes.





	Time After Time

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again everyone! I said I'd write a sequel with Crowley's POV and here it is! This time loosely based on the classic Time After Time (I'd recommend Iron and Wine's version, it's so good!)
> 
> If you haven't read the first part, "A Thousand Years", I highly recommend reading it first because there's a couple of callbacks to it that make more sense in context. They both should, hopefully, if I've done this whole writing thing right, stand mostly on their own.
> 
> Only other note: For the scene in Rome I used the version from the Official Script Book because it was a little longer on dialogue and I thought the dynamic was a little better.
> 
> Anyway, hope y'all enjoy! :D Let me know what you think!

Romans.  Blast the whole damn lot of them, especially the Caesares.  After how this week had gone, Crowley needed booze.

“’Pop down to Rome’ they said,” he murmured to himself as he headed for what had become his usual tavern haunt, “’Just a quick side job with the emperor, no big deal’ they said.  Load of bollocks.”

He’d been meant to tempt Caligula into a couple of small political mishaps involving aqueducts, but it had all gone a bit tits-up in 37 when the bastard went stark-raving mad.  It was fun at first, but you can’t tempt someone into doing bad things when the bad things they’re already _doing_ are so much worse.

Humans had discovered this propensity for making their own trouble. The assignments from Downstairs paled in comparison to things they thought up on their own.  It was frustrating, he didn’t see what the damn point was anymore.

Crowley had seen violence before, many times, but on this level was insanity.

He was almost happy that somebody offed the bastard; at least the horse was doing fine1.

As he went into the building, the gentleman who’d been sitting in his usual place suddenly remembered some pressing matters to attend to and left.  Convenient. Crowley took his seat and flagged down the bartender.

“What have you got?”

“It’s all written up there,” she snapped at him, pointing to a sign behind her, “Two sesterces an amphora for everything except the Greek retsina.”

“I’ll have a jug of whatever’s drinkable.”

“Jug of house brown,” she said as she almost slammed it on the table at him, “That’ll be two sesterces.”

Crowley rolled his eyes and tossed the payment on the bar. All he wanted right now was to get rid of this four-year headache and leave.  Before he could even take a sip, he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“Crawley?  Crowley? Fancy running into you here,” Aziraphale said cheerily, taking a seat at the bar.  Crowley looked at him, then promptly decided on ignoring him and went back to his wine.  The last thing his bad mood needed was a chipper angel fouling it up.

“Still a demon, then?” The angel asked him, fidgeting in his seat.  Annoying. Not at all endearing.

“What kind of a stupid question is that?” Crowley snapped, “‘Still a demon?’ What else am I going to be?  An aardvark?”

“Just trying to make conversation,” the angel said sadly, crossing his hands in his lap.

“Well, don’t,” he said as he diverted his attention back to ignoring Aziraphale, but louder this time.

He almost felt bad for snapping at the angel, all he’d been doing was being nice.  But Crowley didn’t like _nice._ Nice, as it was, was a four-letter word and one he couldn’t stand2. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

Last bloody thing he needed today was the smug, self-righteous angel there.  Stupid bloody celestial wanker.  Showing up, flashing his blue eyes, existing.  Stupid.  It’s not like he went _looking_ for the angel in Mesopotamia or Golgotha; just happened to be there3.  Just happened to keep running into him.  Not on purpose at all. 

He glanced over at Aziraphale, surprised to see him looking honestly depressed.  Crowley knew himself it could get lonely for an immortal, even if the Earth wasn’t _that_ old yet.  He knew that all too well and could see that look on the angel’s face.  _Ah bugger it all,_ Crowley cursed to himself.

“Cup of wine?  It’s the house wine – dark.”  Aziraphale nodded at him, visibly brightening.  Must be that celestial nonsense.  Crowley turned back to the bartender, “A cup for my, ah, acquaintance here.”

Aziraphale nodded his thanks to the bartender, almost bouncing it seemed, before turning to Crowley.

“Salutaria,” the angel said, and they toasted. 

 _That oughta be good enough,_ Crowley thought as he turned back to his own drink, _Now leave me the hell alone._

“In Rome long?” The angel was, pointedly, not going to leave him alone.

Crowley could’ve laughed if he hadn't been too busy sulking.   The angel was so damn _stiff_.  Couple millennia around humans you’d think he’d at least pick up on how to not have a stick up his arse.  “Just nipped in for a quick temptation, what about you?”

“I thought I’d go to Petronius’s new restaurant.  I hear he does remarkable things to oysters.” Crowley tried not to notice the angel’s eyes light up, but he failed.  Aziraphale was almost giddy, were angels supposed to get giddy over things like food? 

He silently wondered what other little secrets the angel might be hiding.

“I’ve never eaten an oyster,” Crowley said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, well, let me tempt you to…oops.” The angel smirked at him, “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

Crowley turned to face him slowly, taken a bit by surprise. That wasn’t unusual around Aziraphale; he was a very different angel from most Crowley had met.  He didn’t _pretend_ to be good, he just was.  Jokes was a new one, though.  Angels didn't joke.  Crowley thought the wine might be making him feel a bit warm inside.

He still felt warm inside over oysters and more wine, what would be the first of many dinners or lunches they’d share together over millennia. They talked about food and drinks and what the philosophers of the day were up to.

“What I’d really like,” the angel had told him, “Would be to take all of these wonderful things humans have written down and put them in one place.  Wouldn’t that be tip-top?”

“Tip-top?” Crowley shot him a look.  He didn’t understand why the angel said such daft things. Didn’t understand why it made him want to smile.

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale grins mischievously, “Absolutely wonderful.”  The angel gave a self-satisfied head-wiggle before sipping his wine.

Crowley laughed, “Whatever you say, Angel4.”

A look passed upon Aziraphale’s face at that, but Crowley couldn’t be sure if it was the wine or something else.  He decided it must’ve been the wine, because he could’ve sworn he’d seen the angel blush a bit.  And that left a feeling in his stomach that he wasn’t used to in the slightest.

Demons, as a rule, are not supposed to feel love or anything akin to it.  It’s burned out of them when they fall.  All that is to be left is contempt, anger, hatred, and evil.  Burn out the positive, leave the negative; that’s the punishment. So, the feeling that Crowley is starting to teeter on the edge of is foreign to him.  He thought it might be the oysters.

Not a _completely_ foreign feeling, that is.  Crowley thinks he may have felt something vaguely similar in another life.  He _knows_ he felt something similar one day on a wall, being shielded from the rain. He also knows the feeling isn’t altogether unpleasant.

Over the years he will put a name to it, and, more specifically, a face to it.  A soft, round face with wispy blonde hair and an affinity for French food and books and scrolls of all kinds.  As time continues, he’ll find himself again and again going out of the way for that face. Any time that face has a slight pout he’ll find himself doing anything to change it.  That face should smile, and smile all of the time.  Smiling just fits there, makes the eyes on that face sparkle.

The name he puts to it is much more difficult than the face.  _Love,_ after all, is a four-letter word.

He knows that angels feel love; he knows he must’ve in the past, before he fell.  Crowley figures this out in the 1600s, that this _thing_ must be love.  It feels like the sonnets and poems and nonsense that the angel makes him sit through and listen to even though they’re boring. He also figures out that no matter how much these feelings cut him, they’ll never be returned.  So he makes Shakespeare a household name instead and hopes against hope that the angel realizes _why_ 5 _._

He’s not sure _when_ he decided he was in love with Aziraphale. He knows it started around then, in Rome with the wine and the oysters.  He knows it only grew from there.  It all seemed very familiar; this fall compared with the other fall.  Sauntering vaguely towards…well…something he should saunter vaguely _away_ from.  But he just couldn’t.

He’d always been too good at sauntering.

Time after time.  Any time Aziraphale needed him, he was there.  They were friends but never more than that, and Crowley wouldn't even dare to hope.  An “Arrangement” of convenience for Aziraphale, but to Crowley it meant so much more than that.  Every once in a while, the angel would say or do something that would make Crowley’s…well…not _heart_ , demons don’t have hearts6.  Make something skip a beat.  Like the way the angel’s face would light up almost every time he saw him.  Or when he would look at Crowley expectantly for a miracle with those big eyes, full of hope.  Or the little scrunched up face he'd make over a particularly good meal or good wine.

But every time Aziraphale would start to get closer, his duty would get in the way.  Crowley had decided a long time ago that just being _around_ Aziraphale was enough, he didn’t need the feelings reciprocated.  As long as they were friends and as long as he was in Crowley’s life that was good enough.

It would have to be good enough.

_*****_

_You go too fast for me, Crowley._

Crowley awoke with a start in his flat, late one evening in 1967.  Sleep wasn’t a necessary thing for demons, but he enjoyed it almost as much as the angel enjoyed food.  The past week it had been difficult, like his mind wanted to play the conversation from the Bentley on replay until it picked out something different. 

“Too fast,” he grumbled to no one, because no one was there, “Too bloody fast.”

_tick…tick…tick…_

He rolled over and grabbed the wine bottle on his nightstand – amazingly still full despite having been drunken down earlier in the evening – and took a long swig from it.  He could hear the clock ticking, loud as anything.  He didn’t even know why he kept it there at this point.  Hadn’t been on time for an assignment in years, the humans didn’t need his help damning themselves they’d gotten so bloody good at it. Right now, it was telling him it was just past three in the morning.

_You go to fast for me, Crowley._

Playback in his head, over and over, keeping him awake. He thought to the tartan flask of Holy Water, sequestered safely behind the sketch he received from his old buddy Leo. He thought to the bird statue in the hallway, surreptitiously removed from the rubble of a bombed-out church. He thought to the bookshop that was only a few minutes away by car and had to remind himself, once again, that Aziraphale surely wanted nothing to do with him.

_tick…tick…tick…_

A few nights ago, when Aziraphale had given him the Holy Water, Crowley had been gobsmacked.  The argument over it in the first place had been one of their worst (in his mind). He'd felt bad enough about it that he decided to take a nap.  It ended up lasting 50 years.

_Too fast for me, Crowley._

Damn angel was so ingrained in everything Crowley did, it was pathetic.  If Hell found out, well, who actually gave a fuck at that point.  He wished he had something to yell at, to take out this feeling on. Maybe he should get a houseplant or something.

This feeling was more demonic, darker.  Heartache, he believed it was called.  This felt more like being a demon than anything else he’d ever felt.  A pit, bottomless and dark, right down inside of him.

He wondered if angels felt heartache, too.  He quickly put that thought aside and drowned it with another gulp.

_tick…tick…tick…_

“Oh, for Satan’s sake would you SHUT UP!” he screamed and threw the bottle of wine at the clock, breaking both into a billion pieces7.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, resigning himself to another night with no sleep.  He wondered what Aziraphale was doing right now.  Not that it mattered.  Not that he _cared_ , he’d done that once before and it backfired on him horribly. He was about to throw something else when the phone rang8.

He heard the answering box from the living area, and then heard a familiar voice in mid-conversation that made him almost run to catch the phone.

“-It’s just that I haven’t heard from you since I gave it to you, and I hate to call so late but I was concerned-“

“Hey, Angel,” Crowley tried to sound nonchalant, like he hadn’t just been throwing wine bottles around, “What did you want?”

“As I was _saying_ ,” Aziraphale continued, sounding stiff as ever, “I was concerned you’d done something…foolhardy!  I haven’t heard from you in several days and right after giving you that…that…stuff.”

“I told you it’s for insurance,” Crowley said, attempting to sound indignant9, “It’s locked up, nice and safe, I’m the only one who can get to it and it’s only for an emergency.”

“But- “

“It’s notfor me to use on _myself_ , daft angel.” Despite his attempt at a cool demeanor, Crowley smiled to himself.  Just hearing that voice was enough sometimes, especially after so long apart. 

He knew that was selfish, but he was a demon.  It was allowed.

“Good, at any rate I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“Ah, Angel, I’m touched.” He could practically hear the eye-roll across the phone line. 

The line stayed quiet after that.  For a minute Crowley thought Aziraphale had hung up on him for a change.

He heard the angel sigh, he sounded tired.

“Crowley, would you like to come by for tea sometime next week?” He heard the trepidation in the angel’s voice and wished he could snap his fingers to make it go away.

“I’d love that, Angel,” Crowley said, smiling a smile that reached all the way to his eyes for once.

“Great," Aziraphale's voice sounded lighter, "Should be fun.  It's been...quiet without you around."

Crowley finally felt that oysters feeling again.  Was Aziraphale admitting he missed him?  Crowley shook off the thought.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but it didn't do to dwell on 'what ifs'.

They made their plans and hung up the phone; Crowley remembered a day on a wall in the rain.  Remembered how good Petronius’s oysters had been, although the company had been better.  Remembered how damp Wessex was, but how bright the angel had shined out to him through that thick fog.  Remembered a night during the blitz, his feet burning but knowing that he'd cross all the consecrated ground in the world just to be wherever the angel was.  That had taken weeks to recuperate from; Aziraphale had never known that, he didn’t feel the need to tell him.

But if Crowley would walk through fire for anything, it was his angel.

_*****_

Eventually, he would do just that.  In two days, he’d walked through fire three times. 

Once when the shop burned down, screaming among the ashes. A misunderstanding was what it had turned out to be, but at the time Crowley had been sure they’d come for Aziraphale.  That Heaven or Hell had taken away the one solace he had in this world.

Once across the M25 (driving still counted right?), flooring it through the wall of hellfire he was responsible for.  Like hell was he going to let Aziraphale face Armageddon on his own.

Lastly when he wore his angel’s face and stared down the archangels from a pillar of hellfire.  It had been exceedingly difficult to keep his calm hearing how the other angels treated him, and it was no wonder to him why Aziraphale was as guarded as he was.  They saw his goodness as a weakness; a rich fucking joke coming from Heaven of all places.  They couldn't tell that was what made Aziraphale better than all of them.

It had been almost a month since the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t; something had changed between them.  He could pinpoint it back to when they had lunch at the Ritz.  There was something in the way Aziraphale had said ‘To the world’ that had given Crowley pause.  Something in his new mannerisms.  They had immediately made plans to see each other again the next day, which had been unheard of between them.  Aziraphale was less anxious, more expressive.  Freedom looked good on his angel. 

Freedom had done wonders for Crowley as well.  He’d been emboldened by it, almost.  He was wearing his feelings on his sleeve more than he ever had before.  He’d been being…nice.  That word used to make his skin crawl, but after everything else it had actually started to feel good.

It felt good to see his angel smile.

It felt like oysters in Rome, like shelter from the rain, like burning feet and droning actors and crepes in Paris and way too much Chateauneuf de Pape.  It felt like something he’d never dreamed would happen.  But he had to know.  He had to make sure that the angel knew, that  _his_ angel knew, what his feelings were. He’d taken the leap, ready to fall a second time.

“Do I still go too fast for you?” Crowley tried his best to sound cool, knowing that he didn’t in the slightest.  All he could do was search the angel’s face for answers.  He saw a pinkness coming into Aziraphale’s cheeks, but no indications other than that.

“They aren’t paying attention to us anymore, Angel, and I can’t keep pretending anymore,” he heard his own voice crack and mentally chastised himself, “Not after all this.”

Aziraphale was just staring at him, blankly.  Like when your phone won’t load and it’s just a little circle, spinning around and around and around.  Any other time, this would’ve been adorable, but right now with everything on the line all he wanted to do was to know.

Fearing rejection but reaching out anyway, he placed his hand on Aziraphale’s, expecting him to pull away.  The angel didn’t, and the demon’s soul had now been laid bare.  All he could do was wait through the agonizing silence.

“Come on, Angel, don’t just leave me hanging here.” He pleaded.  He didn’t like pleading; he’d done it so rarely.  So often in the week up to the Apocalypse-But-Not he’d pleaded with anything that might listen, but he never put much stock in it.

Demons, as a rule, didn’t pray.  But if Crowley ever had to pray to someone or something, it’d be his angel first before anything or anyone else.

The sudden warmth of the angel’s lips on his cheek was almost enough to send him over the edge.  Relief washed over him like a flood.  _Love_ washed over him.  All these years and all this time, this one simple gesture said the centuries of words that had never been said between them.

Crowley was unequivocally in love with his angel; his angel was in love with him.  He felt it, all around him, in a way he’d never been able to before.  Demons couldn’t feel love, after all10.

“I think, perhaps, that is…maybe I’ve finally caught up.” The words whispered so quietly, as though prying ears were around, as though something sacred, were better than any Queen song Crowley had ever heard.  He’d been waiting so long.  He reached out and softly touched his angel’s cheek, as though he were touching something made of the most fragile glass.

“Finally, I’ve been so tired of slowing down.”  They laughed, the kind of laugh that only comes with great revelations that are so scary up until they are revealed. Crowley could have stayed right there for the next eternity and been perfectly content.

“A thousand years, Angel.  A thousand years at least,” Crowley whispered to him softly, tired of hiding but still a little scared of breaking this thing that was so engrained in them both and yet so new, “I’ve loved you the whole damn bloody time.”

“I love you, too,” he heard Aziraphale say gently, “Let’s go for a thousand more then?  Together this time.”

Crowley moved his hand from Aziraphale’s cheek to his chin, and tilted his head closer, “Promise?”

“As far as an angel can promise, my dear.”

With that Crowley pressed his lips to the angel’s, centuries of promises sealed in that moment.  Centuries of wanting, of wishing, of hoping.

They were on their own side now, and they always would be. But they’d face all of it together.

It was ineffable.

 

_________________

1- The horse getting appointed to a priesthood position within the Roman Empire was something Crowley had always considered to be one of his better ideas.  Pity Caligula died before he could make the horse a full senator, it would have been hilarious.  41 AD was a very boring year.

2- Other words demons cannot stand and will make them very angry:  Kindness, charity, hope, puppies, kittens, and little toesie woesies.

3- This was a lie; he just didn’t fully realize it yet.

4- This was the first time Crowley had referred to Aziraphale as “angel”, and he meant it in the literal sense.  Young couples dining nearby, however, decided it was wonderful as a term of endearment and the usage has snowballed from there.

5- Unfortunately for Crowley, making sure Shakespeare became a household name involved hanging out with him a lot.  They became great friends, as Crowley did with most artists he met.  Shakespeare may or may not have “borrowed” a line or two of Sonnet 18 from a very, very wine-drunk Crowley.  

6- Demons actually do have hearts, most of them just whither from not being used.  As much as he professes _not_ to care and _not_ to love, Crowley loves just enough for his to stay functioning.

7- The wine bottle reappeared almost instantly on his nightstand, full again.

8- To the surprise of no one in the flat, because no one was there, it was going to be the wine again.

9- He didn’t.

10- Celestial scholars in both Heaven and Hell would debate for centuries from now on exactly HOW Crowley had escaped damnation with love intact.  There are two prevailing theories for this:  The first is that he’d been on Earth for so long that he’d relearned what love was. The second is that sometimes something is just so much _bigger_ than anything Heaven or Hell can touch.  Crowley and Aziraphale, for what it’s worth, believe in the second theory.


End file.
